Monday, December 31, 2012

Mariners "Possibly" Dealing With Ethier

Rumored today by our dear friend Jason Churchill from Prospect Insider that the Mariners are in trade talks for a hitter. His belief is that the hitter is named Andre Ethier. First impressions: I love Andre Ethier....

Then I went to www.baseball-reference.com and looked up his contract. Basically, Ethier is making over 17 million dollars per year that the Mariners would never pay the full amount of, luckily for us, the Dodgers would have no issue eating a large chunk of that salary. At least I would hope.
The part that I know Jack Z would absolutely love is that he is under contract through 2017. One of Jack's interests is having guys that are under team control that he can build around.

That brings us to his stats. What would we be building around? Ethier is a good hitter, averaging a .290 BA with 20 homers a season and 86 RBI per year and a 3.5 WAR in 2012. Not horrible stats, but not 17 million dollar stats either. If we were to look at his defense we would see that Ethier isn't the best fielder out there. To have his bat in the lineup, the Mariners would actually be sacrificing defense by putting him in right field.

A lot of Mariners fans would be perfectly okay with a sacrifice in defense to put some runs on the board, but I caution you that we already have Jason Bay and Raul Ibanez competing for spots in our outfield and I can guarantee you that the Dodgers are looking to upgrade their defense in this trade.

I could see the Mariners parting ways with Franklin Gutierrez who has struggled to stay on the field the last couple of years. The Dodgers would be asking for a lot more than that though. The Dodgers would most definitely try and pry away one of our top prospects in our organization as well.

With that being said, the Mariners are probably looking at more than just Ethier in this deal. Their has been talks that the Mariners are also interested in lead off hitter Dee Gordon and we could be asking for a Major League ready left handed pitcher to add to our starting core.

Rumors, rumors, rumors. All this speculation could lead to a tumor. Such is life in the off-season, every bit of speculation leads to a bit of excitement and fear not knowing what is to come but the fact that we hear a rumor at all after a week of silence through the holidays is rather nice.

If this deal goes down, it will probably include at least 6 players changing jerseys and some cash. With the way Jack Z likes to work things, it could also include a third team. I do know this, with the approach that the M's front office has to building this organization, it will be a well thought out move that will pay dividends to our team as a whole. The Mariners are not in any position to make a Bavasi type move right now. Nobody thinks were that close to winning yet. The idea is to build our stock with proven hitters in hopes to entice in next years free agent market.

What are your thoughts? Ethier in right? Dee Gordon leading off? Who would you get rid of to see that happen? Comment below!

SodoJoe